


in a most unusual way

by sovery



Series: Twist and Twine [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aliases, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Drabble Collection, F/M, Female Harry, often contextless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9861737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovery/pseuds/sovery
Summary: Contextless creeping. A mysterious transfer student. And Tom Riddle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm justifying this as a writing exercise. Apologies if any of you are waiting for the next bit of The World Inverts - I'm almost done but this past chapter has been much more tedious to write than usual.

Rhythm, flesh, and that long, elegant neck tilted back, pink mouth open in a moan and her hair, messier than ever, impossibly long and splayed out on his sheets, and being on top of, inside of the beautiful, powerful witch and her loss of control, yes, rhythm, flesh, sensation, and colour –

And then he wakes, breathing a little harder than is his wont. Tom scowls. The fleeting vision of what had undoubtedly been Ianthe Blighte fades as he reaches for his wand to cast a tempus, and grimaces. It is almost an hour before his alarm will go off, but he doubts he will be able to get back to sleep now. With another flick of his wand, he vanishes the evidence of his dream and jerks the covers of his bed back, irritably.

It was perfectly normal to be dreaming about girls at this age – about sex, he thinks, with another grimace – but it didn’t mean he appreciated it. Asleep, anyway, it was enjoyable in its way but frankly, he doesn’t find the prospect of rutting with some pimply Hogwarts student particularly appealing.

Stepping into the boys showers, he continues to scowl. That wasn’t the whole truth, either. It’s the illicitness and intimacy that he dislikes the idea of – being physically vulnerable to another person wasn’t something that he had any interest in, and acting like it – sex – was all some big secret or some meaningful vice made it disagreeable. At least in theory.  

Tom has a great deal more mental discipline than most of his peers. This, he thinks, is not arrogance, or pride, but a fact that he can produce substantial anecdotal evidence to back up, but all the same, he occasionally had dreams about – it. He only has so much control over his own mind.

And he can no longer deny that as of late, the enigmatic Ianthe has featured far too frequently in his night-time wanderings. In fact, he thinks furiously, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, this was the second time he’s dreamed of her this week. He isn’t exactly oblivious to her charms, which aren’t inconsiderable. She might not be the most exquisite, stunning example of female perfection he’s ever seen, but she is definitely one of the prettier girls among the sixth years.

He leaves the showers with a towel slung around his waist and conjures a small blue ball of light to follow him back to the dorms to dress. Polyxena Fawley is supposed to be the most attractive girl in school (though the fact that she herself clearly thought so might have added to that reputation) and she has a better figure than Ianthe, he reminds himself, except that he’s not dreaming of limpid blue eyes, or blonde curls, or her breasts, which are still semi-reverently spoken about whenever Rosier and Avery get drunk and aren’t within earshot of her boyfriend. Lucretia Black is beautiful, he supposes, when she stops sneering, and he thinks she is probably more elegant in a way, more to his preference.

And yet it appears that his unconscious mind has fixed on Ianthe Blighte – who doesn’t even like him, he reminds himself. The girl seemed to go out of her way to avoid being near him, though it had taken a while for him to pick up on it. At first he had thought that she was avoiding all of the boys in their year, or at least, his mind supplies, all the Slytherins.

Yes, she was friendly enough with the bland, incompetent Hufflepuff she’d been partnered with in Charms, but that wasn’t because she was romantically interested in him. Tom supposes it is because he was so obviously harmless.

But she had been wary of spending time with Tom’s Slytherins right from the start, and he has just recently decided that it was because she didn’t want to be around _him_. She is wary of him – and he seriously doubts at this point it has anything to do with the warning from Dumbledore that he had originally supposed that she had received when he first noted her caution around him. There’s definitely something to puzzle out there, if he is so inclined.

He decides to take his bookbag with him – if he can get a head start on some of his class readings now, then he can spend more time perusing the restricted section later. The risk of checking out some of those books, and having it recorded that he was the one who had expressed interest in them, had become too significant to ignore at this point, especially after the events of the past year.

He feels like groaning when he steps into the common room and sees Ianthe in front of the fire. Should he ignore her, he wonders. Her shoes are off and she is seated on the floor, with an emerald blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She probably wanted to be left alone at this time of the morning, when she had come down from her common room. He had.

But why should she get what she wants if he is forced to dream about her?

“Couldn’t sleep?” he says, clearing his throat. She startles at that, jerking away from whatever it was she found so fascinating in the fire, and looks at him, troubled. Maybe even vulnerable, he thinks.

“No…” she said says, her voice rougher and lower than usual. It affects him, after the dream he’s just had. “You?”

He just offers her one of his smiles. She never seems to appreciate them though, for all that everyone else does. Annoyed, he walks over to take a seat on one of the couches that surround her place in front of the fire. And because he’s feeling contrary, he takes the one behind her, so that she is forced to turn to look at him – to look up at him.

She is probably clever enough to know that it’s a wordless expression of dominance, or a challenge, but looking at her from a closer vantage point, as she’s turning around to face him, her blanket still around her shoulders, he sees that there are very dark bags beneath her eyes. She is so pale that she looks almost ill.

It’s not unattractive – his mind flashes to the swooning maidens in the National Gallery, a half remembered trip for the orphans that they had taken the year before he had received his letter. Before the collection had been removed for safekeeping from German bombs.

“What do you think about the nature of dreams?” he asks her. She is taken aback – it is a question intended to befuddle – he does not have to play nicely for this girl who is really not important, and already dislikes him. He was already declared extraordinary before she set foot in this castle – he does not need to pretend to be utterly boring, utterly ordinary, for this connectionless waif.

She narrows her eyes at him, but apparently takes him at his word, for she answers.

“Lies,” she says. “Pleasant or nightmarish, they are lies.”

“Crafted by whom?” he asks. It is not an altogether impressive answer, though from her remote, almost angry expression, he can tell she definitely has something in mind. “Our unconscious minds? A capricious god?”

“Souls,” she says, her eyes darkening. She smiles then, unexpectedly. It is a quick flash that is more quickly suppressed, but it almost looks taunting. “Ours, or others’, maybe… on rare occasions.”

“Well, then what is a soul?” he asks, smiling back, as though this is an idle game. And it is, after a fashion.

“Don’t you know?” she says, in reply, head turning back to look at the fire. A non-answer, but perhaps not without meaning.

“An animating force, is the best that we have been able to prove, thus far,” he says in reply, uninterested in his own answer.

“Hmm,” she says, “I suppose not.” She remains facing the fire, apparently done with the conversation. Well. He is not done with her.

There is a book on the floor beside her, which he recognizes from the Restricted Section. It was written by a madman named Baldassario Zabini which starts with theories about what the wizard had referred to as the ‘fabric’ of the universe, then theorizes about magic’s origins and role in all things, and then devolves into insane rambling about time and how it was all an illusion. It was not a book he would have expected her to have.

“What are you reading?” he asks, waiting for her to glance back at him.

“A book,” she replies, shortly, still looking at the fire. He debates the merits of cursing her. It’s been some time since anyone spoke to him with any real level of insolence. He mentally affixes the glassy-eyed expression that always comes after the cessation of shocking pain onto her face, but it fails to please him. He’d like her admiration, he thinks, more than he’d like her fear.

But then, of those who know him best (though they know him a good deal less well than even they suppose), fear is part and parcel of their regard for him.

Should he bring their little back and forth out into the open, he wonders.

 _I can’t help but get the feeling, Ianthe, that you don’t like me very much_ , he imagines himself saying, and then glances at the clock.

No. There is too little time, and too great a chance of being interrupted. But they will have this conversation soon, he decides, eying her. Very soon.


End file.
